Houses?

Remember the first time you heard the term "the grass is always greener on the other side?" Me neither. But it's kind of true. Now that we've ostensibly decided to make an offer on one house another house has come back on the market that is making me question our decision to offer on the new/old one. I think it's fair to say that this blog now relies entirely on inept metaphors to describe our housing lot. With that in mind, here goes: The house that we think we want to put an offer on is like a new girlfriend. She's sweet and kind. You imagine that you will never have any fights and that things will continue in bliss for ad infinitum.

Unfortunatley you're also certain that bliss is overrated and that you'll be bored after a few months. And then, your old girlfriend, in this case a house that we offered on ten days ago and would have been happy to get, comes back on the market. Maybe its been a while since you've seen her and you're remembering all the imaginary cabinets you put up in her stomach, and the recycled glass counter top eyes of hers, and you're suddenly wondering what you're doing with this new house when you have all this history, (about three days total) with this old house/girlfriend. And you know that with the old gf you have more potential, but you've got a lot of repair work to do. Some fences to mend, some floors to refinish. Or you can just start fresh with the new girl/house with the lack of junk and repairs. What to do?

I find that I make most of my best decisions at the last possible minute. I'm thinking that we'll probably flip a coin with our real estate agent tomorrow to decide which house we offer on. That's actually the same decision making method that sent Columbus to the New World, Washington to Valley Forge, and the god Poseidon to the sea as opposed to the land. Those might all be false. Except for the Poseidon portion, which is clearly factual.

Irrespective (I sort of just wanted to use that useless word to begin a sentence) of which home we actually end up with it's a slightly dehumanizing process. For all of the walking around other's homes, and putting your sofa where their's is, or punching a mental hole in the kitchen wall to connect it with the dining room, it's strange that we don't actually know the people whose homes we are trying to buy. I'm almost entirely certain that I have nothing intelligent to say about this, but I find it odd. I'm not even sure if its always been this way or not. I'm willing to even consider the fact that a time existed when people didn't go to IKEA every Saturday after they moved into a new home. (Not really. I mean, can you imagine?) Insert shudder here. Insert another shudder if you think I have any desire to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA. Lord knows I wish I had a better job, so that I could afford to pay someone else to make me feel emasculated by doing all that sort of stuff around my house.

It seems like it might change the home-buying process to know who you were buying the home from. Do things like that matter at all anymore? Is there any difference between a large corporate bank and an old lady strapped for cash? How much can a consumer reasonably be asked to care on a purchase that ranges into the hundreds of thousands of dollars? And if not then, what is the financial threshold at which one is responsible for making an ethical/moral purchase? Is it the 99 cent value menu at McDonald's? where we went two Friday's ago thank you very much.

S: What does your gut tell you to do about this housing situation?
M: My gut tells me we should offer on both houses. Then, dig a tunnel between them large enough to periodically flood and conduct battles between mini-submarines to help subsidize the expenditure.
S: I'm not sure I'm going with your gut on this one.
M: We could design one of them to be fortified against zombie/vampire attacks and the other for your more garden variety floods et al. It's a pretty sensible approach.
S: Yes, but the one has Pergo floors. I feel like we're destined to never have hardwood.
M: You can't imagine how disappointed about that I am. Note: If you can imagine not being disappointed at all and kind of just going about your day with nothing being any different then you'll have a pretty good idea of how disappointed I felt.
S: I just don't know what to do?
M: Me neither. Sigh.